Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @04:11PM
from the follow-the-dirt-road-and-hang-a-left-at-the-Denny's dept.

pigrabbitbear writes "It's been nearly a decade since Shin Dong-hyuk, an ex-prisoner of North Korea's Camp 14, crawled over the electrocuted body of a friend lying dead on a fence, a boundary he was born inside of and lived within for 23 years. He made his way across the Chinese border on foot and was granted political asylum and citizenship in Seoul. Now, thanks to updated Google maps of the region, you can actually (if somewhat loosely) retrace the steps of his incredible escape. Through its Map Maker program, which crowdsources cartographic info, Google has published finer details of some North Korean roads. More notably, it has included shaded-in locations of the country's notorious prison camps. The data has flowed in from a few different sources, including defected North Korean expats now living in Seoul. Geographically-minded tourists and visitors of North Korea have weighed in, and historic map data from pre-partitioned Korea into has also been helpful. (Google maintains that the recent trip to Pyongyang by CEO Eric Schmidt had nothing to do with this project.)"

Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @12:05PM
from the over-there-but-over-here dept.

First time accepted submitter taikedz writes "Citrix Xenapp with Receiver/Metaframe allows publishing individual applications installed on a Windows server to users on remote machines. These applications open in their own windows, along side others as if they were installed locally. I am looking to do the same at home, with free software, publishing applications from Mac, Linux, and Windows machines (and yes, I've verified the license agreements for the apps I am going to do this with!). Up until now, the only alternatives I have found are full-on remote desktop login, not seamlessly-integrated. Can you recommend any tools that can achieve the goal of remote individual application access across platforms for free or at low-cost?"

Posted
by
timothy
on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @10:54AM
from the get-out-of-the-phone-booth dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Electronic devices are built to last, which make them very reliable. However, if during a hostile situation such a device has to be left behind or gets dropped, it will continue to function and could end up giving the enemy an advantage. With that in mind, DARPA has set about creating electronics that work for as long as necessary, but can be destroyed at a moment's notice. The project is called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR). Its main aim is to develop so-called transient electronics that are capable of dissolving completely, or at the very least to the point where they no longer function. Destroying a VAPR device should be as easy as sending a signal to it or placing the device within certain conditions e.g. extreme heat or cold, that triggers the rapid destruction process."

Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @08:07AM
from the wto-only-applies-to-other-people dept.

hydrofix writes "On Thursday TorrentFreak broke the story (verified by BBC) that the government of Antigua and Barbuda, a tiny island nation on the Caribbean, was planning to launch a legal 'pirate' website selling movies, music and software without paying a penny to U.S. copyright holders. Now, the World Trade Organization has given its final approval for the Antigua government to launch the website. The decision follows from long-running trade dispute between the countries, related to online gambling, which was ruled in Antigua's favor in 2005. After the United States refused to compensate, the WTO granted Antigua the right to 'suspend' U.S. copyrights for up to $21 million annually."
From the article: "The Antiguan government further reiterated today that the term 'piracy' doesn’t apply in this situation, as they are fully authorized to suspend U.S. copyrights. It is a legal remedy that was approved by all WTO members, including the United States."

Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @06:35AM
from the oddmuse-shall-reign-supreme dept.

About a year ago, someone decided that EmacsWiki was outdated and unorganized, to the detriment of the Emacs community. So, he started a new wiki (WikiEmacs, choosing Mediawiki instead of Oddmuse, and attempting to give it a saner organizational structure). In the end, his project failed to grain traction, and it's shutting down for the greater good of Emacs: "I want to extend a big public apology to Alex Schroeder for my harsh criticism of EmacsWiki. One year later I see that stewarding documentation projects and nurturing a healthy community around them is much harder than writing software. I’m but a humble software engineer and you’ll have to forgive me for my misguided actions. I hope that something good has(will) come up from all this drama. At the very least I urge everyone who cares for EmacsWiki to try and clean up, extend and improve at least a couple of articles on subjects that are of importance to him. I know that’s something I’ll be doing from now on."

Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Tuesday January 29, 2013 @12:05AM
from the grow-your-own-sweater dept.

sciencehabit writes "Researchers have identified three genetic mutations that appear to have helped humans survive in the frigid climate of Siberia over the last 25,000 years. One helps the body's fat stores directly produce heat rather than producing chemical energy for muscle movements or brain functions, a process called 'nonshivering thermogenesis.' Another is involved in the contraction of smooth muscle, key to shivering and the constriction of blood vessels to avoid heat loss. And the third is implicated in the metabolism of fats, especially those in meat and dairy products—a staple of the fat-laden diets of Arctic peoples."

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday January 28, 2013 @06:27PM
from the a-place-in-the-clouds dept.

sciencehabit writes "Each year, hundreds of millions of metric tons of dust, water, and humanmade pollutants make their way into the atmosphere, often traveling between continents on jet streams. Now a new study confirms that some microbes make the trip with them, seeding the skies with billions of bacteria and other organisms—and potentially affecting the weather. What's more, some of these high-flying organisms may actually be able to feed while traveling through the clouds, forming an active ecosystem high above the surface of the Earth."

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday January 28, 2013 @03:28PM
from the get-to-the-choppa! dept.

snydeq writes "Security pros and government officials warn of a possible cyber 9/11 involving banks, utilities, other companies, or the Internet, InfoWorld reports. 'A cyber war has been brewing for at least the past year, and although you might view this battle as governments going head to head in a shadow fight, security experts say the battleground is shifting from government entities to the private sector, to civilian targets that provide many essential services to U.S. citizens. The cyber war has seen various attacks around the world, with incidents such as Stuxnet, Flame, and Red October garnering attention. Some attacks have been against government systems, but increasingly likely to attack civilian entities. U.S. banks and utilities have already been hit.'"

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday January 28, 2013 @03:06PM
from the facebook-and-the-rest dept.

redletterdave writes "A new report released Monday revealed that Google+, less than a year and a half after its public debut, is now the No. 2 social network in the world with 343 million active users. Even better for Google, YouTube, which had not previously been tracked as a social network until recently, is now the No. 3 social network in the world with about 300 million active users. Google Plus and YouTube are being used by 25 percent and 21 percent of the global Internet populace, respectively."

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday January 28, 2013 @02:46PM
from the read-all-about-it dept.

benrothke writes "In its first week, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief was #3 on the New York Times Best Sellers list and will likely be #1 soon. The fact that the book is in print is somewhat miraculous given the voracious appetite Scientology has for litigation. It is the first time that such an expose could have been written and found such wide-scale reading. An interesting analysis of this fact is found in Why the Media Is No Longer Afraid of Scientology by Kim Masters. But as mesmerizing an expose as the book is, I doubt that this will be more than a speed bump to Scientology's growth and fund raising." Keep reading to be clear about what Ben has to say.

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday January 28, 2013 @01:15PM
from the stop-tracking-me-bro dept.

Dupple writes "After settling with the FTC, Google is under pressure again regarding user privacy. From the BBC: 'A group of Apple's Safari web browser users has launched a campaign against Google over privacy concerns. They claim that Google bypassed Safari's security settings to install cookies which tracked their movements on the internet. Between summer 2011 and spring 2012 they were assured by Google this was not the case, and believed Safari's settings to be secure. Judith Vidal-Hall, former editor of Index On Censorship magazine, is the first person in the UK to begin legal action. 'Google claims it does not collect personal data but doesn't say who decides what information is "personal,"' she said. 'Whether something is private or not should be up to the internet surfer, not Google. We are best placed to decide, not them.'"

Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday January 28, 2013 @12:53PM
from the because-he-can dept.

colinneagle writes "About two weeks back, I was using my Android tablet and looking for a good graphics editor. I wanted something with layers and good text drawing tools. That's when it hit me. We already have that. Photoshop used to run on Windows 3.1. And Windows 3.1 runs great under both DOSBox and QEMU, both of which are Open Source emulators available for Android and every other platform under the sun. So I promptly set to work digging up an old copy of Photoshop. The last version released for Windows 3.1 was back in 1996. And finding a working copy proved to be...challenging. Luckily, the good folks at Adobe dug around in their vaults and managed to get me up and running. And, after a bit of tweaking, I ended up with an astoundingly functional copy of Photoshop that I can now run on absolutely every device I own. And the entire environment (fonts, working files and all) are automatically backed up to the cloud and synced between systems. But what other applications (and, potentially, games) does this give me access to? How far can I take this?"